The UCLA Graduate Biochemistry Student Association (gBSA) hosted its annual Trivia Night and Costume Contest on October 24, 2025, bringing together graduate students from across the biosciences for an evening of friendly competition, creative costumes, and community building, as the first event of the academic year. gBSA is a student-run organization that organizes social, outreach, […]

Professor Kyoko Nozaki (University of Tokyo), known for her pioneering research in organometallic catalysis and polymer chemistry, visited UCLA on October 15 to give the inaugural Jeffrey I. Zink Invited Inorganic Lecture. Faculty members, students, postdoctoral researchers, and staff attended the lecture in the Dongwon Yoo Seminar & Conference Hall in the Mani L. Bhaumik […]

Professors Gerard Wong and Paul S. Weiss, together with Wong group postdoctoral researcher Dr. Calvin Lee and bioengineering Ph.D. student William Schmidt, are part of a research team that has discovered how harmful bacteria identify where to cluster and cause infection. This finding could lead to new treatments for life-threatening infections in people with cystic […]

Chemistry & Biochemistry faculty members recently contributed to a new University of California report, Expanding Opportunity: Chemistry, Math, and the Future of STEM at UC. Based on systemwide data, published research, and interviews with faculty and staff from all nine undergraduate UC campuses, this report—prepared by the University of California Office of the President’s (UCOP) […]

In a recent Nature Catalysis paper, Professor Hannah Shafaat and collaborators at Ohio State University and at Berkeley and Brookhaven national labs report the first structural and spectroscopic characterization of a new class of metalloenzyme related to, but distinct from, nitrogenase enzymes. Their discoveries about the enzyme methylthio-alkane reductase provide new insight into renewable biofuel […]

The Department is delighted to welcome Professor Giulia Palermo, a world-renowned computational biophysicist recognized for her pioneering computational studies of genome editing systems. She will join the UCLA faculty as a Full Professor on July 1, 2026. “We are excited to welcome Giulia Palermo to UCLA,” said Professor Miguel García-Garibay, UCLA’s Dean of Physical Sciences. […]

Professor Paul S. Weiss has been appointed to the inaugural editorial advisory board of RSC Applied Interfaces, a new journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). In June 2025, the RSC launched two new journals—RSC Applied Interfaces and RSC Applied Polymers —focused on innovative applied research across the interfacial and polymer science spectrum. These are the RSC’s […]

The UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry has appointed Professor Kalli Kappel as the Linda and Fred Wudl Term Chair, effective retroactively to July 1, 2025. Established in 2005, the Linda and Fred Wudl Term Chair supports exceptional faculty in UCLA’s Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. By enabling the department to appoint either a junior […]